There's Something Rotten In Denmark
by Monopoly
Summary: One Shot. The signs had been there all along, and Harry felt a fool for not seeing it sooner. It was all too fishy. It always had been. Title yanked directly from Hamlet.


Blaaaaaatant parody. I swear to absolute storybook goodness that I was reading a "Harry finds out he's just a pawn in Dumbledore's war game" fic and saw "prawn" instead of "pawn" as a typo. And I just HAD to write this. Enjoy, please.

Disclaimer: This sucker is a parody. Fair use exception, boo yaaaah.

Harry Potter had known that something was Not Right for a very long time.

It had all started when he was five years old. His Uncle Vernon had received a mysterious letter in the mail. The next day, the entire family had taken a trip to an aquarium, where they had attempted to abandon Harry.

After that, the Dursley's behavior had changed drastically. At mealtimes, his uncle and cousin would stare at him longingly when he thought they weren't looking, especially if his aunt was serving a seafood dish. His aunt started encouraging him to take longer baths, and he found that every time she drew the water for him, it was a little bit hotter.

By the time Harry reached his eleventh birthday Dudley had taken to chasing him around with a lemon slice and a pat of butter. As such, Harry was relieved when his Hogwarts letter arrived, promising him entry into a world of magical glee.

At Hogwarts things had gotten better, for a time—he made lots of new friends and he loved using magic. Something was still off, though.

Like how no seafood dishes ever appeared anywhere near him at the table at mealtimes. Or how Ron was called to Dumbledore's office one night, and was later found drooling over Harry in his sleep. That one had creeped Harry out more than he cared to admit, although Ron had repeatedly claimed he was just sleepwalking.

It was the worst in classes, though. McGonagall tended to hover over him with a hungry, almost feline look in her eyes during Transfiguration. Sprout would sometimes order him to stand near a wilting plant instead of participating in class, and could be heard muttering things like "great fertilizer" and "ought to leave the boy out here all night". Snape seemed to be the only exception—at first. But then one day he gave the class a potion recipe that looked suspiciously like a broth his aunt had used to make, and then Snape had come up behind him and pushed, and Harry had barely missed his steaming cauldron, and he really hoped he had been seeing things but the entire class had looked a little disappointed.

When he had met Sirius, he had seemed different. But after a summer apart, Sirius came back looking slightly guilty and a lot hungry, and appeared to be trying to make an effort to avoid Harry.

He couldn't go to the Weasley's without being stalked by the entire Weasley family. When he went to Diagon Alley for school supplies every summer random people off the street would toss salt at him or dump water over his head, and he never made it through Gringotts without being poked at by a goblin spear. It was all very unnerving.

It came to a head, though, at the end of fifth year. After the fiasco at the Department of Mysteries, where no less than ten Death Eaters had thrown nothing but tarter sauce inducing spells at him (and that had disturbed him deeply for some reason), and Sirius's death, Dumbledore finally revealed the prophecy to Harry.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… Born to those who have thrice refried him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…And either must fry at the hand of the other, for neither can swim while the other survives…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"

"Your parents," he had explained in a solemn tone, "were great lovers of seafood."

And it had only gotten worse from there.

Harry had had a lot of time to think over the summer, and the conclusions he had come to were not pretty. He was being manipulated, ignored, and used. Not necessarily in that order. And at the center of it all was Dumbledore.

Once he had been returned to Grimmauld Place, Harry lurked in the kitchen, waiting. Normally he avoided kitchens, for obvious reasons, but he was determined to speak to Dumbledore and the kitchen was the first place he would go.

After several hours of snarling at anyone who came within ten feet with a fork, Dumbledore finally appeared. Harry immediately leapt to his feet. "You!" he blubbered, then froze.

He had blubbered.

This confirmed the terrible suspicions that he had been having all summer.

He was nothing but a prawn.

"I'm nothing but a prawn to you!" he bawled angrily.

"Now, Harry, whatever gave you that idea—"

Harry gave him a look.

"Now, Harry, however did you figure this out?" Dumbledore amended with a fake smile.

Yes, Dumbledore is a master at hiding his emotions, but suddenly all of his fake emotions are blatantly obvious. That's how it works.

"How did I figure it out? How could I not? You're all trying to eat me!"

The rest of the Order plus all of Harry's friends suddenly appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.

It was a rather tight fit.

"Oh, Harry," cried all the girls in unison, "will you put on some marinara sauce for us?"

That was the last straw. Well, the last condiment, so to speak.

Years later, the inhabitants of that sad, dirty house would wonder what had happened to Harry Potter.

They all lamented that he had probably ended up in some third rate seafood restaurant as the dish of the day.

In reality, he took a job at Sea World and had a small fling with a dolphin before settling down as a hermit (crab) for the rest of his life.

And Albus Dumbledore never forgave himself for making Harry nothing more than a prawn.

END


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